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MOUTHFULS OF MARBLES ON WORKCHOICES
Michael Jacobs 28 November 2007
The first rule of mandate politics is always be wary when a politician claims a mandate. That said, nothing could be clearer than that the new government has some sort of mandate for unravelling the wilder extremes of the so-called WorkChoices legislation.
AFTER THE FALL, CHAOS: A HOWARD RETROSPECTIVE
Michael Jacobs 27 November 2007
In the end – or, more correctly, quite quickly on election night – the result was pretty well what almost everyone except much of the Canberra political commentariat knew it would be – a decisive win for Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party. It was, as expected, a dangerously complete walloping of both of the coalition parties.
HOWARD'S END
Michael Jacobs 14 Nov 07
Do we say that the Prime Minister’s formal campaign keynote address in Brisbane on Monday would be a black joke if this was not so serious, or do we say that it isn’t serious at all because none of it has to mean anything? Either way, this item in the coalition campaign gets a fail mark.
TRUST THESE MEN WITH AN ECONOMY?
Michael Jacobs 14 November 07
In the end, it is the interest rates that are finally doing it to this hapless government, though not perhaps in quite the way some people might have expected or feared. The damage done to the government on the interest-rate increase was a self-inflicted wound. They did it to themselves. They set themselves up for an attack on their credibility by their absurd attempts, a week or so earlier, to jawbone the expected increase away.
Politics and the English Language
Language might not seem an obvious subject for a politics blog, but language and the way it is used has everything to do with politics, as George Orwell told us more than 60 years ago in his essay Politics and the English Language. Language, with all its nuances, is the lifeblood of politics. If you doubt it, read this from the Prime Minister:
By Michael Jacobs
Nuclear implosion typifies coalition shambles - August 29
If you wonder why the coalition parties seem incapable of drawing any favourable response from those of us who answer successive opinion polls, you need look no further than the shambolic handling of the nuclear-power issue.
Michael Jacobs
Politics blog - August 16, 2007
What do we learn about Peter Costello, or John Howard, or the state of the government, from this week’s revelations of Mr Costello’s late-night chest-beating, two years or so ago, about how he was going to take on an electorally doomed Mr Howard? Not much.
Michael Jacobs
MURDER BY PHOTOGRAPH
By Michael Jacobs There are times when we all wish we could draw, such as when they offer us a picture of the Prime Minister in one of his outdoor-living true-blue hats, like this: given the times, a cartoon suggests itself. But is it obvious that it is fair enough for the media to select visual images which dramatise and accentuate the awkwardness of John Howard’s position?
The Mountford case: an ironic postscript, an inconvenient fact
Almost everyone had their go the other week as the strange and disturbing case of former Anglican minister John Mountford sputtered into uneasy life again, just as it was being snuffed out. But before it slides from memory, let’s dwell on one fact which came out. It is a fact which bears centrally on the appalling witch-hunt which forced Dr Ian George to resign as Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide back in mid-2004.
By Michael Jacobs
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